Customer Reviews
Grim and very much dated 1973 movie - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 04 Dec 2008 
This old movie is as grey & as miserable as the British weather in winter. Most if the movie is shot indoors & has a stagey feel to it. There is lots & lots of talking. It is split into three two person talk sections. One is between Connery & the suspect - rape suspect (Ian Bannen), the second is between Connery & his wife, & the third is between Connery & the man brought in to investigate the incident, which is played by Howard.
By the end even the most patient viewer may be getting a bit too talked out. It seems to get especiallly trying when you realise that they just seem to be going over the same issues again & again.
A subconscious rapist - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 03 Nov 2008 A smalll English film, well done & many other things, but the interest is not in the plot because we know from the very start who the rapist is. But the whole interest of the film is how the rapist does not know he is one, does not remember his crime & how his memory is going to come back little by little, though it will take him killing another - at least - man who managed to see through his official innocence. That shows how being a rapist is a very special crime. It is a secret crime that happens in the deepest depth of one's mind & of which the rapist himself is not conscious, though his subconscious, when it takes over to guide him through the crime, is extremely well organized & makes him do exactly what is necessary for him to succeed & to go through it without any problem or opposition. This subconscious is also strong enough to make him forget about the crime entirely so that he does not have to hide anything since he does not know any more, though he does not need his torch in the night to go back to the girl in the woods, & her reaction confirms in our eyes the fact he is the rapist even if he is trying to comfort her now. And yet that subconscious is trying to hide the tracks of the crime by looking for an easy scapegoat who would in a way or another accept, willy-nilly or unwillingly if necessary, to be the surrogate rapist. The transfer of another transfer, & that is the beginning of the falll of the rapist because he will become a criminal of his own. And we are set wondering how it is possible for a criminal of that type to mislead his surrounding co-workers or even relatives & acquaintances into believing he is an innocent good man. How can crime hide so well & so deep in a man's deeper layers of his personality? Apart from that tricky psychological side of the film, it is rather simple & uneventful. But just try to imagine how he is going to realize he is the rapist & how the people around him are going to realize he is the rapist. And we can only have a flitting picture of what he did to the various witnesses or people who are in his way to leveling the witnesses into the ground. Quite a bloody trail.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Strong drama and concrete - By: Lou Knee, 13 Sep 2008 The film's style is as harsh as the hard edges of its environment. The set is excellent & pretty authentic looking with its large grey box rooms full of angles but with very little else in them but a hard flat table & a couple of chairs. There are no soft edges, & sometimes the hardest things of alll in them are the men who work there. This strong drama is both a study of what harm such a hard job can do to its men & what harm some of its men can do to the job. It gets across well how reallly sordid dealing with this sort of crime can be. I think its a great piece of filmed theatre, but would have to be in the mood to watch it. The use of its disjointed narrative is particularly effective & reflects the nature of police interviewing. 4.5 stars from me, because although it is great, it's not enjoyable in the usual or commercial sense. If you are a fan of this sort of TV playhouse style of drama then it will definitely help.
Excellent but grim - By: S J Buck, 11 Jul 2007 
Anything directed by Sidney Lumet is worth considering. This is one of his very best. A dark & disturbing story, featuring two brilliant performances by Sean Connery & Ian Bannen. Its no coincidence that 'The Hill' from eight years earlier was also directed by Lumet & featured Connery & Bannen.
Connery is Sergeant Johnson a Policeman who after twenty years of dealing with murders, rapes & other violent crimes has had enough. Bannen plays child molester Kenneth Baxter who Johnson has to interrogate. His interrogation is brutal & Johnson starts to doubt whether he is any better than the man he is interrogating. This is a grim & depressing film throughout, yet somehow its one that always surprises me when I see it again. I think this is down to Connery's massive screen prescence, although it helps to have one of the best Directors as well of course.
This is only a 15 on DVD in the UK, but some may find the subject matter & general downbeat nature of the film off-putting. If in doubt I would rent it first.
Connery - The Actor! - By: In Glorious Black And White, 06 Mar 2007 Film makers, film students; One of the films you should watch & learn from. This is the sort of story telling that film makers aspire to.
The stature of actors like Connery makes the need to pad out the story with unnecessary love interests, bedroom scenes & foul language, unnecessary. This is alll achieved by superlative acting skills.
Connery gives a study in intensity that dramaticallly displays the vulnerability of a damaged police officer without the usuallly cliches. No 'beautiful' people here; No CGI (too early I know); real people in real situations. A magnificent study...............
